The production of thermoplastic containers by shuttle blow molding is described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,614,807 (Lagoutte). In shuttle blow molding, two or more sets of blow molds, each of which is made up of a pair of mold halves that open and close relative to each other, are moved, in sequence, to engage an extruded tube of thermoplastic material at a moldable temperature, or a spaced apart plurality of such tubes in equipment used to simultaneously manufacture a plurality of containers in each mold set. Each mold set is then moved away to a station where the portion of the tube in the mold set is blown into its desired configuration, as determined by the configuration of a cavity that is defined by the halves of the mold set, the movement of each mold set according to the aforesaid '807 patent involving a first motion coaxial with the extruded tube to stretch the tube to properly size it and/or to axially orient material therein. The halves of the mold set are then opened to permit removal of the blown article, and the mold set is then returned to grasp another section of the extruded tube or tubes for a repeat of the process. The mold sets of a given shuttle blow molding machine move in predetermined paths relative to one another so that sequential portions of the extruded tube are usually grasped by one or another of the mold sets, without the need to employ intermittent extrusion of the thermoplastic tube or tubes.
In the manufacture of containers by shuttle blow molding it has become popular to apply labels to the containers, by introducing a label or an opposed pair of labels, into the open molds before the parison(s) are engaged thereby, by equipment that applies labels to the interiors of the open mold halves, and this equipment is generally described as in-mold labelling equipment. Known types of in-mold labelling equipment have the capacity to feed labels to the mold sets of a shuttle blow molding machine at a rate equal to the total of the production rates of all mod sets of the shuttle blow molding machine. Unfortunately, however, some of the known types of shuttle blow molding machines position the various mold sets at different positions from one another while containers are being blown therein. This, then, requires an in-mold labelling machine for each mold set, notwithstanding that the total capacity of the multiple in-mold labelling machines for a given shuttle blow molding machine far exceeds the molding capacity of all the mold sets of the machines. The use of an in-mold labelling device in connection with a shuttle blow molding machine is described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,205 (Oles et al.) and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,919,498 (Weber). Further, an in-mold labelling device in connection with an injection blow molding machine is described in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,808,366 (Kaminski et al.), the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
Another disadvantage of known types of shuttle blow molding machines that applies even when the machine is not being used to apply labels to the containers in the mold is that article removal equipment must be provided for each mold set, because the article removal positions of the various mold sets differ from one another. A shuttle blow molding machine that employs four (4) mold sets is described in International Patent Application Serial No. PCT/US00/26497. However, there are many shuttle blow molding operations that do not require the full productive capacity of a four-mold machine.